JUST WHY DID PENDRY MISS OUT ON THE JOB ?

WHEN you've seen them snarling like mad dogs across the floor of the House of Commons you could run away with the impression that our politicos are a pretty rabid bunch.

It's all burlesque, of course. Away from the TV cameras and Hansard they're a soft touch, full of sentiment and consideration for one another's welfare, quick with condolence when either The Leader or the nation cuts them down.

Thus the air was full of mutual lamentation when four of them, quite by coincidence, found themselves lunching in the same London restaurant this week. Three were no longer on the Parliamentary pay-roll: Norman Lamont, lately Tory MP for Kingston-upon-Thames; David Evans, lately Tory MP for Welwyn and Hatfield; and Michael Brown, lately Tory MP for Brigg and Cleethorpes. All had been swept away in the May Day avalanche.

The irony was that the fourth had racked up a terrific victory for New Labour at Stalybridge and Hyde with a massive 14,806 majority, including a 9.34 vote of confidence on the swingometer.

Yet Tom Pendry, despite the Falstaffian bonhomie and French Riviera suit, was the sickest of them all. Deep down, he was sicker than soccer's sickest parrot.

The reason for this was the phone call from No 10 the day after the election. Pendry, after all the years in waiting, after personal endorsement by the late Labour leader John Smith, knew his day had come.

It hadn't.

`Sorry about this, Tom,' said the Prime Minister. `I have a disappointment for you. You haven't got the job.'

`Yes,' replied Pendry, who had done much to help launch Tony Blair's political career in the early days, `I'm sorry too.'

The post of Minister of Sport had been awarded to Tony Banks, a chirpy little Chelsea football fan whose immediate reaction was to say: `I find myself in heaven.' The profundity of this remark was matched by the gravity of his first three public statements about the future of British sport.

These were: 1, that Gazza has no brain; 2, that any foreign footballer currently earning a fortune here should be allowed to play for England; and 3, that he couldn't sit in the Royal Box at the Cup Final for fear of embarrassing all around him with involuntary expletives.

We've had some terrible Tory Sports Ministers in the past but none has made quite such a neanderthal start as that. This is the argot of the Six-O-Six phone-in freak, the lingo of the lager bar, but there is a bit more to becoming Britain's Minister of Sport than being a demotic figure down the King's Road pubs.

Tom Pendry and I squat at opposite ends of the political spectrum but, like most of us whose lives are immersed in sport, I have enormous respect for a man dedicated to the Labour cause since he was 15 and deeply into sport earlier than that: football and cricket in his native Kent, Commonwealth and RAF boxing champion during his National Service, then an Oxford boxing Blue.

Astonishingly, only six days before the election he published a thoroughly sane, progressive and virtually non-party manifesto for the future of British sport. Neither Left nor Right could quarrel with its sound intentions and we anticipated, if Labour got in, a settled period of national sports strategy.

Tom Pendry, to all sports insiders, was 1-10 in the betting. Kate Hoey was a cautious 8-1 saver in case the Prime Minister were intent on recruiting token women into his inner circle. Tony Banks was never even in the frame.

Eight days later the favourite was left in the paddock. Did Pendry fall or was he pushed?

This is not a political broadcast on behalf of the Pendry party. It merely reflects the bewilderment of many who cannot believe that the best man for the job was jettisoned. In the meantime, we shall look at the performance of Tony Banks with considerable interest.